On Feb. 5, 2023, ApeX Pro attended the StarkWare Sessions conference and dived deep into the ApeX Pro platform and architecture design before an audience made up of those familiar and new to this permissionless, non-custodial derivatives decentralized exchange (DEX).

ApeX's Head of Business Development, Tekla I., was invited to speak on stage and in the spotlight: why derivatives DEXs are set to redefine Web3 this year, how ApeX Pro has been designed to lead the charge and what new innovations we can expect with DEXs that'll take Web3 to the global stage. Watch the full video here.

DEXs have come a long way since their debut. Today, we have automated market maker (AMM) and order book models for DEXs. Integration of engines such as StarkWare's layer-2 (L2) scalability solution StarkEx, has made DEXs more secure, efficient, privacy preserving, & transparent. Apart from being self-custodial and non-KYC, what makes DEXs even more appealing to users is a relatively low fee structure, which DEXs are able to accommodate as they have essentially dispensed of inefficiency and weakness of the traditional financial models.

Here's a short recap:

• The Importance of Self-Custody

DEXs appeared on the market in 2014. At the time, these offerings were quite unintuitive, difficult to use, plagued with problems related to liquidity; some of these issues persist even today. But what made DEXs different from established centralized exchanges (CEXs), was the idea of self-custody — while the CEX holds full custody of user funds while mediating transactions, DEXs interact with users' owned digital wallets to complete transactions. Even when a user's funds are deposited on the DEX, they remain under the users' sole and incontestable custody, essentially making it impossible for DEXs to misuse these funds. And with the November 2022 implosion still fresh on everyone's minds, the idea and practice of self-custody has become as prominent a matter as ever.

• ApeX Pro's Social Trading Goal

Some of the emergent issues for DEXs are high gas fees, poor order execution, unfriendly user interface and lack of transparency. We also realized that the order book trading model still takes precedence as far as user preferences are concerned.

We built ApeX Pro to address these apparent flaws of existing DEXs, making it as intuitive, inclusive and transparent as a DEX can be, welcoming all crypto derivatives traders of any and all backgrounds. Our product is very much dedicated to realizing the Web3 vision, which is to shape a free and open ecosystem and build a true community of users who can grow their wealth in a trusted, secure environment.

We build this community by leveraging the principles of social trading — a trading practice that capitalizes on social networks and interactions between traders in a community. Social trading is slowly but surely rising in popularity as a viable financial strategy. It is, currently, the most cost-efficient way to expand and revitalize communities of traders and to ensure inclusivity, without the supervision of intermediaries.

• The Importance of Integrating New Scaling Innovations

In a world of rising demand and increasing costs and competition for block space, ApeX Pro can only stay ahead of the curve when they partner with leading technology partners that will help underpin optimal scalability, security, privacy and efficiency on our platform.

ApeX Pro is leveraging StarkEx’s cryptographic proofs and Validium to securely validate transaction batches — so we deliver non-custodial trading in its most efficient way, with enhanced user performance and experience. ApeX Pro is able to uphold the promise of decentralized and efficient trading by offering users an optimal combination of security and transparency one would usually see in a DEX, and the speed and usability users are used to seeing on CEXs.

This integration increases ApeX Pro’s trade settlement capacity, while fortifying the secure validations of every transaction on the trading platform without compromising the privacy of a trader with respect to their personal transaction data and activities.

• What Lies Ahead for ApeX

In 2023, we will be wading even further into community-focused initiatives led by the introduction of Web3 social trading. We are planning to host the SoulBound Token (SBT) minting event at the end of Q2 2023. These tokens will represent the users' digital identities, preserving information about trading profiles, patterns and history. SBTs will be non-transferable and essentially represent the status of traders, their reputation and performance.

Social trading tools will be launched in Q3 2023, allowing users to take full advantage of social trading on ApeX Pro. And before the year ends, ApeX Pro is also planning to introduce Spot trading to bring a full spectrum of offerings to our traders on the same platform.

We remain committed to the idea and vision of decentralization, believing in the power of social trading to deliver greater advantages for our trading community, and are confident in the integrity of the systems that are helping us to build the DEX of the future.

To get a full glimpse into what was shared during the event, check out our slides, or our litepaper for more details regarding social trading.